The Childcare Workforce Challenge: How Employee Experience Is the Key to Retaining Great Educators

Australia's early childhood education sector is facing a workforce crisis that shows no signs of easing. Centres across the country are struggling to attract and retain qualified educators, and the consequences are being felt by children, families and operators alike. Understanding why educators leave — and what keeps them — is no longer a nice-to-have. It is a strategic priority.

The scale of the problem

The Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) has consistently flagged workforce shortages as one of the sector's most pressing challenges. Annual turnover rates in early childhood education routinely exceed 30%, with some regions reporting rates above 40%. For a sector that depends on stable, trusted relationships between educators and children, this level of churn is deeply damaging.

The financial impact is equally stark. Replacing a single qualified educator costs between $10,000 and $20,000 when you factor in recruitment advertising, agency fees, onboarding time, compliance checks, and the productivity gap while a new educator finds their feet. For a group operating 10 centres, losing even 15 educators per year represents a direct cost exceeding $150,000 — before accounting for the disruption to children, families and remaining staff.

Why educators leave

The reasons educators leave are well documented but poorly addressed. Research from the Australian Government's National Workforce Strategy and sector bodies like the Early Learning and Care Council of Australia points to several consistent themes.

Educators feel undervalued. Despite the critical importance of their role in shaping children's development, many educators report feeling that their work is not recognised or appreciated — not just financially, but in the day-to-day experience of their job. A verbal thank you at the end of a long day is appreciated, but it is not a strategy.

Professional development feels limited. Educators enter the profession because they care about children's learning and development. When opportunities for their own growth are scarce — when there are no structured conversations about their career, no clear pathways, and no investment in their professional learning — motivation erodes.

Communication is fragmented. Educators across multiple centres often feel disconnected from the broader organisation. Important updates arrive late or not at all. Best practice stays siloed within individual rooms rather than being shared across centres. The sense of belonging to something larger than their immediate team is missing.

Compliance is overwhelming. NQF requirements, ACECQA standards, state regulations, food safety, child protection, first aid renewals — the compliance burden on early education is enormous. When it is managed through paper-based systems, spreadsheets, and manual chasing, it becomes a source of stress rather than confidence.

Wellbeing is neglected. Educator burnout is real and rising. The emotional demands of working with young children, combined with staff shortages that increase ratios and reduce breaks, create conditions where even the most passionate educators reach breaking point. Without regular pulse checks, leaders often do not know who is struggling until they receive a resignation letter.

The employee experience gap in early education

Here is the uncomfortable truth: most early education operators invest heavily in the experience they provide to children and families — learning programs, environments, resources, parent communication — while significantly underinvesting in the experience they provide to their educators.

The tools available to educators are often years behind what workers in other industries take for granted. While office-based employees have Slack, automated HR systems and polished intranets, many educators still rely on printed rosters pinned to the staff room wall, WhatsApp groups for team communication, and physical sign-off sheets for policy acknowledgement.

This gap is not about technology for technology's sake. It is about what the tools communicate to your people. When an educator's daily experience involves outdated systems, manual processes and fragmented communication, the implicit message is: you are not worth investing in.

What a great educator experience looks like

Imagine a different scenario. A new educator joins your organisation. Before their first day, they receive a welcome message on their phone from their centre director. They complete their employment documents digitally, read and acknowledge the centre's policies, and watch a short video about your organisation's philosophy and values — all from the app on their phone.

On day one, they already feel prepared and welcomed. Over the following weeks, they receive a 30-day check-in survey asking about their onboarding experience. Their responses are anonymous and protected, so they can be honest. Their centre director uses the insights to adjust and improve.

Every week, they open the company app to see news from across all centres. A colleague at another location has shared a brilliant learning activity. The CEO has posted an update about a new centre opening. A fellow educator has received kudos from a parent for going above and beyond — and it is visible to everyone.

At month three, they sit down for a structured one-to-one with their director. The conversation follows a simple template: how are you going, what is working well, where do you want to grow? Notes are saved digitally. Goals are set and tracked. It takes 20 minutes and makes the educator feel seen, heard and invested in.

This is not a fantasy. This is what organisations like Harmony Early Education are building with Prosper.

How Harmony Early Education is leading the way

Harmony Early Education, a growing early childhood education group, recognised that retaining great educators required more than competitive pay. It required a fundamental shift in how educators experienced their daily work.

By implementing Prosper across their centres, Harmony has created a connected, consistent and valued experience for every educator — whether they work at a single centre or across multiple locations. The platform brings together engagement surveys, a branded company hub, team communications, digital onboarding, performance management and peer-to-peer recognition in one mobile-first app.

Educators do not need a company email address. They do not need a laptop. They open the app on their phone and everything they need is there — from the latest NQF policy update to a kudos message from a colleague to their upcoming one-to-one schedule.

The compliance advantage

For early education operators, compliance is not optional. ACECQA assessments, state licensing requirements and internal quality frameworks all demand evidence that policies have been communicated, acknowledged and understood by every educator.

A digital platform transforms compliance from a manual, anxiety-inducing exercise into an automated, auditable process. When a policy is updated, it is pushed to every relevant educator's phone with a mandatory acknowledgement. Completion is tracked in real time. When an assessor asks for evidence, it is available in seconds — not buried in a filing cabinet.

This is not just about passing assessments. It is about building a culture of professional confidence where educators know they are up to date, managers know their teams are compliant, and operators can demonstrate quality with data rather than hope.

Measuring what matters

You cannot improve what you do not measure. Yet most early education operators have limited visibility into how their educators actually feel about their work. Annual staff surveys — if they happen at all — are too infrequent and too generic to drive meaningful action.

Mobile-first engagement surveys designed for the early education context change this. Pulse surveys that take five minutes to complete on a phone, delivered via push notification with automated reminders, consistently achieve response rates above 70%. When the results include AI-powered comment analysis that surfaces themes across all centres in minutes rather than weeks, leaders can act with speed and precision.

The data tells you which centres have strong engagement and which are at risk. It tells you whether educators feel supported by their directors. It tells you whether professional development opportunities are meeting expectations. And critically, it tells you whether people are thinking about leaving — while there is still time to intervene.

Recognition: the most underused retention tool

Recognition in early education tends to be informal and invisible. A director might thank an educator verbally at the end of the day. A parent might mention to the front desk that a particular educator was wonderful with their child. But these moments are private, fleeting and easily forgotten.

Structured peer-to-peer recognition — where any educator can send kudos to a colleague, tied to organisational values, visible across all centres — transforms recognition from an occasional nicety into a cultural practice. When an educator sees that their work is noticed and valued, not just by their immediate supervisor but by colleagues across the organisation, the impact on belonging and retention is significant.

The business case for investing in educator experience

The maths is straightforward. An early education group with 200 educators and 35% annual turnover loses 70 educators per year. At a conservative replacement cost of $12,000 per educator, that is $840,000 annually in direct turnover costs.

A 34% reduction in turnover — which is the average improvement reported by organisations using employee experience platforms — would retain 24 additional educators per year, saving approximately $288,000. Over three years, that exceeds $860,000 in direct savings alone.

But the indirect benefits are equally compelling. Stable teams deliver better educational outcomes. Children thrive when they have consistent, trusted educators. Families choose centres with low turnover because they can see the difference in the quality of care. And educators who stay longer develop deeper expertise, mentor newer colleagues, and strengthen the culture that attracts more great educators.

Getting started

The shift from disconnected, paper-based educator management to a unified employee experience platform does not have to be overwhelming. Most organisations start with one or two capabilities — typically engagement surveys or the company hub — and expand from there.

The key is choosing a platform that understands the realities of early education: educators who work shifts, may not have company email addresses, and need everything to work on their phone. A platform that was designed for knowledge workers and adapted for frontline teams will always feel like a compromise. One that was built from the ground up for how your educators actually work will feel like it belongs.

The childcare workforce crisis is real, but it is not unsolvable. The organisations that invest in their educators' experience — that listen to them, connect them, recognise them, develop them and make compliance effortless — will be the ones that attract and retain the people who make great early education possible.

Your educators deserve more than a WhatsApp group and a printed roster. Give them a platform that matches their importance.